High Fidelity (2000)

Top 5 favourite actors; 1. John Cusack, 2. John Cusack, 3.John Cusack, 4. Jessica Chastain and Kevin Spacey. Top 5 films for music enthusiasts; 1. High Fidelity, 2. High Fidelity, 3. High Fidelity... well you get the point. There is not a film that features the name John Cusack among its cast list, do I not immediately giggle with glee and rub my hands with anticipation for surely the incredible performances I’m about to see. And when it comes to High Fidelity, for me you get non better from the Cush (the cute nickname I gave him). John Cusack plays Rob, the owner of a record store, with such a lack of customers, it’s often seems as if the store is suspended in the darkest most secluded corner of space. However you would expect him in this regards to bend over backwards every time a customer walks in, yet he spends most of the time mopping around and looking depressed. What you need to understand like all the woman he has ever dated, Rob is hugely self absorbed man who under the notion that that the entire female population is only concerned with digging a bottomless pit in the ground and pushing him into it. After the messy end of another relationship, and with his conspiracy in hand, he goes through the top 5 relationships that caused him the most amount of pain, to discover the reasons why each of the women break up with him. Sure Rob is self indulgent, self centered and paranoid, but at the same time he is so enigmatic, witty and compelling, it’s so difficult not to go mushy for the guy and want to give him a big hug. If you read the l book the film was based on by Nick Hornby under the same name, you will realise that there was only one man on the planet that could have made such a frustrating character lovable at the same time and that man’s name is John Cusack. Every time he turns to the camera for direct address, his charisma is so captivating that you feel like you are being hypnotised by his words, yet he remains so natural that it feels like the movie screen simply melts away and you feel as if you just keep bumping into these real life people. Howard Shore’s sound track for High Fidelity is the most impressive convening of great music artists and legendary songs since American Graffiti. At times the sound track almost seems to morph into its own characters and is as every bit as captivating as the characters and the story.